The 2005 'spike' list

WND editors, readers expose year's underreported stories

The failure of the 9-11 commission to investigate the findings of the “Able Danger” team – which allegedly uncovered Mohamed Atta as an al-Qaida operative prior to the attacks – tops the list of the 10 most “spiked” or underreported stories of the last year, according to an annual WND survey.

Around the close of each year, most news organizations present their retrospective replays of what they consider to have been the top news stories in the previous 12 months.

However, the editors of WorldNetDaily always have found it more newsworthy to publish a compilation of the most important unreported or underreported news events of the year – to highlight perhaps for one last time major news stories that were undeservedly “spiked” by the establishment press.

WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah has sponsored “Operation Spike” every year since 1988, and since founding WorldNetDaily in May 1997, he has continued the annual tradition.

Here, with our readers’ help, are WorldNetDaily editors’ picks for the 10 most underreported stories of the past year:

1. Failure of the 9-11 commission to investigate “Able Danger.” In November, former FBI chief Louis Freeh rebuked the 9-11 commission for ignoring revelations by “Able Danger,” a secret data-mining operation that allegedly named Mohamed Atta as an al-Qaida operative a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The assertions made by the Able Danger team contradict government denials that U.S. agencies had any prior knowledge of Atta or any others eventually associated with the attacks.

According to reports, Able Danger had identified Atta, the lead attacker, and three others as probable members of an al-Qaida cell operating in the U.S. by mid-2000.

Last month, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., the vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, said he expected Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to green light public hearings before Congress to disclose more information regarding prior knowledge of Islamist cells in the U.S. before 9-11.

But a dispatch by a Marine Corps Reserve commander, Lt. Col. Mark Smith, was emblematic of the frustration expressed by U.S. troops who insisted that contrary to the mainstream media and it’s emphasis on terrorist attacks, the U.S. is winning the war.

More than 10 years ago, independent counsel David Barrett was charged with investigating former Clinton Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros in relation to his lying to the FBI about tax fraud he committed trying to cover up payments to a mistress. Though Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999, Barrett, in the course of his probe, found evidence of wrongdoing within the IRS and Justice Department tied to the Cisneros fraud.

Reportedly, Clinton team members tried to interfere with Barrett’s investigation, which has cost $21 million, including conducting surveillance of his office.

Clinton lawyer David Kendall allegedly tried to kill the report by gutting it with redactions. Eventually, Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota inserted an amendment to block 120 pages of the 400-page report – those listing Clinton administration transgressions – in an appropriations bill that was signed into law in November.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, still is trying to force release of the full report.

According to the study, 84 California hospitals were closing their doors as a direct result of the rising number of illegal aliens and their non-reimbursed tax on the system. While politicians often mention there are more than 40 million without health insurance in this country, the report estimated that at least 25 percent are illegal immigrants. The figure could be as high as 50 percent.

A business analyst who studied the impact of the nation’s underground economy said there could be 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. today. Robert Justich, a senior managing director at Bear Stearns Asset Management in New York, said the underground economy of illegal aliens working in the U.S. is costing the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid income taxes and could lead to a higher impact on taxpayers if President Bush’s amnesty proposal is passed into law.

Among the doubts was whether the removal of her feeding tube on March 18, which amounted to slow death by dehydration and starvation, reflected her wishes and whether she was in a “persistent vegetative state” as claimed by her husband.

Dr. William Hammesfahr, known as a pioneer in approaches to helping the brain injured, said to ignore the facts would “allow future Terri Schiavos to die needlessly.”

“The record must be set straight,” he said. “As we noted in the press, there was no heart attack, or evident reason for this to have happened (and certainly not of Terri’s making). Unlike the constant drumbeat from the husband, his attorneys, and his doctors, the brain tissue was not dissolved, with a head of just spinal fluid. In fact, large areas were ‘relatively preserved.'”

The criminal investigation of Berger – accused of pocketing highly classified terrorism documents prior to the Sept. 11 Commission hearings – virtually disappeared from the media after it first was reported in July 2004.

The after-action review of the millennium celebration taken by Berger conflicts with his testimony before the 9-11 commission, prompting some Republicans to charge he stole the documents to protect the Clinton administration.

7. The fact that WMDs were found in Iraq. While members of the U.S. Senate are suggesting once again that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin reviewed the major discoveries, including more than 1.7 tons of enriched uranium.

8. Atrocities of radical Islam. Along with the front-page news of attacks in Western nations, radical Muslims continue to wage organized jihad worldwide in places such as Israel, Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Chechnya and the Philippines as well as carry out frequent attacks on non-Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries.

In the U.S., a fatwa, or religious ruling, issued by American Islamic leaders against “terrorism and extremism” was judged as “bogus” by a leading analyst. Organizers included the Fiqh Council of North America. But in a 1995 speech, the head of the Fiqh Council, Muzamil Siddiqi, praised suicide bombers, saying, “Those who die on the part of justice are alive, and their place is with the Lord, and they receive the highest position, because this is the highest honor.” The decree also failed to condemn the radical ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism and did not renounce or acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It also did not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader.”

9. Islam’s impact on French riots. The mainstream media downplayed the Islamic connection to unrest in France that began Oct. 27 with thousands of mostly French Muslims in impoverished Paris suburbs engaging in violent clashes with police as they torched cars and buildings. After 20 nights, officials gave a count of 8,973 vehicles burned, 2,888 arrests and 126 officers injured.

10. Good news about the economy. In the wake of the 2000-02 stock market plunge, the 9-11 terrorist attacks and skyrocketing energy prices, the economy has rebounded in a non-inflationary “Bush boom,” fueled, many economists agree, by tax cuts.

The U.S. Labor Department reported the unemployment rate stood at 4.9 percent for December and the economy added about 2 million jobs in 2005, roughly the same as the previous year. The number of workers filing new claims for unemployment aid recently plunged to the lowest level in more than five years.

Meanwhile, the nation’s industrial output rose by 0.6 percent last month following gains of 0.8 percent in November and 1 percent in October amid recovery in production of Gulf Coast oil.

The U.S. budget surplus was $10.98 billion in December – double the expected amount – despite record outlays, as gross corporate tax receipts reached a new high.

On Wall Street, the Dow closed in on 11,000 as the year ended and later surpassed the mark for the first time since June 2001.